Dialogue: At the Doctor

Describing how you feel is grammatically tricky in Russian because the body, not "you", is often the subject: where English says "I have a headache", Russian says "at-me aches the-head" — and the head is the nominative subject of the verb. This consultation also shows the verb for "complaining of" symptoms (жа́ловаться на + accusative), the bare word for "a fever" (температу́ра), and how duration is expressed with a number that bends the noun (три дня, "three days"). Read the exchange first, then the line-by-line notes — the body-as-subject pattern is the key insight on this page.

The dialogue

Line by line

— На что жа́луетесь?

The doctor's opening question, На что жа́луетесь?, is the fixed Russian for "What's the matter? / What's bothering you?" — literally "On what (do you) complain?".

• жа́ловаться ("to complain") governs на + accusative: you complain on something. So the question word что appears as the accusative на что ("about what"). In an answer you'd say Я жа́луюсь на головну́ю боль ("I'm complaining of a headache").
• жа́луетесь is the 2nd-person plural — the polite вы-form, with the subject вы dropped (the ending carries it). The reflexive -ся → -сь/-есь ending is part of the verb (жа́ловать*ся*).

— У меня́ боли́т голова́ и температу́ра.

This is the line to study hard, because its skeleton is the opposite of English. У меня́ боли́т голова́ = "I have a headache", but built as "at-me aches the-head":

• У меня́ ("at me / in my possession") is the standard Russian way to say "I have…" — у + genitive of the pronoun (я → меня́). Russian has no everyday verb "to have"; it uses this у
  • genitive frame.
• боли́т ("aches, hurts") is 3rd-person singular, agreeing with…
• голова́ ("head"), which is in the NOMINATIVE — it is the grammatical subject of боли́т. The head is doing the aching; you are merely the person at whom it happens.

So the literal map is "By-me aches [the] head". If two things ache, the verb goes plural: У меня́ боля́т но́ги ("my feet hurt", plural боля́т with nominative plural но́ги). This subject-agreement is exactly what English hides.

и температу́ра = "and a fever". Note that температу́ра alone means "a (high) temperature / fever" — Russians don't add an adjective; just У меня́ температу́ра means "I've got a fever". Here it's elliptical: У меня́ боли́т голова́ и [есть] температу́ра — the У меня́ covers both.

— Давно́?

A one-word question: Давно́? It means "For a long time? / Since when? / How long has this been going on?". давно́ is an adverb of time ("long ago, for a long time"); in a medical context it compresses "Has it been bothering you long? / Since when?". The doctor doesn't need a full sentence — the single adverb does the job.

— Уже́ три дня.

The answer: Уже́ три дня = "For three days now".

• Уже́ ("already, now") stresses that the symptom has already lasted this long.
• три дня ("three days") is a duration in the accusative — but the noun's form is set by numeral government, the trap of Russian numbers. After два / три / четы́ре the counted noun goes into the genitive SINGULAR: день → дня. So "three days" is три *дня
  • (gen sg), not три дни. (After five and up it would flip to the genitive plural: *пять
  дней*.)

The phrase needs no preposition — bare accusative duration answers "for how long?": три дня "for three days", неде́лю "for a week", весь день "all day".

— Откро́йте рот и скажи́те «а-а».

The doctor's instructions: two polite imperatives, both вы-forms ending in -те. Откро́йте ("open!", from perfective откры́ть) + рот ("mouth", accusative — but masculine inanimate, so it looks like the nominative; note the fleeting vowel: рот → рта in other forms). скажи́те ("say!", from perfective сказа́ть) + the quoted sound «а-а». Perfective imperatives, because each is a single requested action.

— Вам ну́жно бо́льше отдыха́ть.

The advice: Вам ну́жно бо́льше отдыха́ть = "You need to rest more."

• Вам is the dative of вы — the person who needs something stands in the dative in this impersonal construction.
• ну́жно ("[it is] necessary") is an impersonal predicate; with the dative it means "X needs to…".
• бо́льше отдыха́ть = "to rest more" — comparative adverb бо́льше ("more") + the imperfective infinitive отдыха́ть (general, ongoing activity — resting as a habit, not one completed rest).

Vocabulary gloss

Register note

The consultation runs on вы throughout, as a doctor-patient interaction should: жа́луетесь, Откро́йте, скажи́те, Вам. A doctor addressing an adult patient uses вы; the patient does too. With a child the doctor might switch to ты (На что жа́луешься? Откро́й рот), but the default clinical register is polite вы. The health vocabulary itself (боли́т, температу́ра, Давно́?) is register-neutral — you'd use the same words informally with a friend ("у меня́ голова́ боли́т"), only swapping the surrounding pronouns and imperatives.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• жа́ловаться на + accusative = "complain of": На что жа́луетесь? is the standard clinic opener.
• У меня́ боли́т + NOMINATIVE body part: the body part is the subject, the verb agrees with it (боли́т sg / боля́т pl), and the person sits in у
  • genitive — the mirror image of English "I have a headache".
• температу́ра by itself means "a fever"; no adjective required.
• Давно́? packs "since when / how long" into one word; answer with Уже́ + duration.
• Numeral government: 2/3/4 take the genitive singular (три дня), 5+ the genitive plural (пять дней); plain duration is bare accusative, no preposition.
• "You need to…" = dative person + ну́жно/на́до + infinitive (Вам ну́жно отдыха́ть) — no nominative subject.